Greetings and salutations!
It’s me, Merk (Mike Snyder) - author of Tales of the Traveling Swordsman, Distress, and a few others from days gone by. Hopefully this is the right spot for this post. It looks so much different now from when I ran the domain as a PHPBB board. 
No, I’m not out of retirement as far as writing IF goes. But I have started a newsletter. While this is going to serve as a plug for that by necessity, the real reason for my visit is to ask for a favor, for anybody willing to participate. As usual for me, this is a bit long-winded, so bear with me. I actually do ask a favor after all this lead-up.
The newsletter is about video games, but the topics vary wildly. I wrote about my game collecting obsession, and about the podcast I did for a few years when my oldest daughter was still a kid. The latest issue is all about music in video games, and next week’s issue is a Summer Game Fest predictions wrap-up and my top picks among the announcements.
The issue after next, or maybe the one after that, will likely be about Interactive Fiction. I’m basically going through all the major topics that shaped me over my life, and this is a big one. I’ll be tackling it from several angles, from a brief history of early text adventures, to a retrospective on some of what I wrote, to maybe a sample transcript and info on how to play classic parser games, to just whatever comes to mind. I might even embed a small CYOA among the pages, somehow. We’ll see.
One part of this, though, and here comes the favor, is that I’d like to feature more than just this. Granted, this may not be worth your time. Right now I have 8 subscribers (two of them are me) and a handful more that check out each issue without actually signing up (which confuses me, because this is just a fun little free thing I’m doing, so why the heck not). Contributing isn’t going to make you famous, unless somehow this becomes more than it currently is eventually and the back issues see a lot of traction. But I digress.
If you’re curious about my tone, topics, and the general vibe, I do a Q&A with myself in the very first issue, and there’s plenty to get a feel for what it’s all about in the four issues (so far) since then. It might give you an idea on whether this is something you’d want to be associated with or not:
I want part of the feature to be about other IF authors, or even just other fans of IF even if you’ve not written anything. Each person who responds (if any) will get a little paragraph with their answers to these questions. I’m looking for short responses if possible. Just a sentence or two for each thing. If it’s a yes/no type or question, feel free to elaborate, but if you’re as long-winded as I am, it might be tough to fit the format I’m going for. If I ask for one example, you can do two or three as long as (again) it’s not overly long. If you don’t want to answer something, or simply can’t, then skip it.
Replying here is OK. I was going to say email me, but that’s asking a lot. So I’ll just get replies from here. Again, it may be the June 21 or June 28 issue where this happens (if not later), but I’ll let you know once I know; if for no other reason than to make sure there’s no confusion about the cut-off or having replies that don’t make it in. If I get too many responses (which I’m not expecting) I might have to pick and choose. I doubt that’ll happen though.
This is basically a mini-biography for each person who responds. Oh, one other thing. The newsletter is generally family-friendly, so please avoid cursing and so forth. Go for it if you like, but I might redact it.
And the questions are:
- Your name (or psuedonum; however you’d like to be credited).
- Your IF-related website or IFDB page or whatever (if any).
- Briefly: What interests you about Interactive Fiction?
- Briefly: If you’ve written IF, what game/story are you most proud of?
- What’s your preferred tool/platform for writing IF (if you write IF)?
- What are your one or two favorites (games/stories not written by you)?
- Closing thoughts or additional comments? Briefly, if possible.
And that’s all I’ve got. Thanks in advance.
---- Mike